Is Ethereum hopeless? 21Shares refutes: ETH has huge potential! It's like Amazon in 1990.

After the launch of the Ethereum spot ETF, investor reaction has been tepid, with Ethereum's price not showing significant improvement. However, 21Shares, one of the eight issuers of Ethereum spot ETFs in the U.S., stated today that investors largely remain unaware of Ethereum's potential, much like Amazon in the early 1990s. (Background: The Ethereum Foundation was scared off by FUD! Researchers abandoned their positions as advisors to EigenLayer) (Additional context: Analyzing the six major reasons for Ethereum's stagnation: unexpected impacts of upgrades, ETF failures, not keeping up with the hype...) The first Ethereum spot ETFs in the U.S. were launched in July, but compared to Bitcoin spot ETFs, the capital inflows have been relatively small. Recently, Ethereum's price has not shown improvement. 21Shares research analyst Leena ElDeeb analyzed today that significant capital inflows into Ethereum spot ETFs will only occur when Ethereum's potential is understood: Ethereum is complex, somewhat like Amazon in the 1990s—full of potential, but its uses are not very intuitive. Federico Brokate, Vice President and Head of U.S. Business at 21Shares, added that Amazon was initially an online bookstore, and few could predict its transformation into a global e-commerce and cloud computing giant that reshaped the way people shop and use digital services. Similarly, Ethereum was initially a platform for basic smart contracts, and since its launch in 2015, it has supported over $140 billion in decentralized finance applications: just as Amazon transcended the book sector and redefined an entire industry, Ethereum might surprise us with revolutionary use cases that we cannot fully imagine today. Although Ethereum's current market capitalization of $320 billion only accounts for 6.25% of Amazon's $2 trillion valuation, Federico Brokate pointed out that one advantage Ethereum has over Amazon in the 1990s is the large number of talented individuals dedicated to making the web useful: by the late 1990s, Amazon employed about 7,600 people. In contrast, the Ethereum network currently has over 200,000 active developers, including software engineers, researchers, and protocol designers, all contributing to Ethereum's development. Amazon now has over 1.5 million employees worldwide, and we might see similar growth in the Ethereum ecosystem. The future potential of Ethereum remains enormous. Despite Ethereum facing challenges from Solana and other L1 competitors, it still dominates the DEX, lending, stablecoin, and RWA markets. BlackRock has tokenized over $533 million in money market funds on Ethereum, and UBS recently launched a tokenized fund on Ethereum, while PayPal and Visa are also developing on Ethereum. Federico Brokate bluntly stated that only a few investors understand Ethereum's potential, and many choose to wait and see regarding Ethereum spot ETFs. Leena ElDeeb added that short-term investors remain cautious and are less willing to invest in Ethereum spot ETFs until Ethereum's potential and use cases become clearer: however, we remain optimistic that as the market matures and Ethereum's diverse applications grow, investor sentiment and adoption rates will follow a similarly continuous growth trajectory. Although the recent rise of Ethereum L2 has led to a decline in mainnet revenue, Federico Brokate is not worried, pointing out that this is similar to Amazon experiencing losses for several consecutive quarters in the 1990s. He believes that Ethereum's L2 scaling strategy is attracting millions of new users at a low cost, and eventually, the fees generated by L2 will become "large enough" to restore Ethereum's mainnet revenue to levels seen before the Dencun upgrade. Further reading: VanEck: If L2 continues to "drain Ethereum," it will significantly impact ETH, making the target price difficult to reach. Related reports: A disastrous loss! The long position on ETH/BTC by whales is "cutting losses of tens of millions of dollars to pay debts." When will Ethereum rebound? UBS launches the first tokenized fund "on-chain Ethereum"; what's the reason TradFi chooses ETH? Opinion: What exactly caused Ethereum (ETH) to lose its vitality? "Is Ethereum hopeless? 21Shares refutes: ETH has huge potential! It's like Amazon in 1990." This article was first published on BlockTempo (the most influential blockchain news media).